Ron Rivera’s Message to Cal Players and Fans After First Defeat

The first hiccup by Cal football since Ron Rivera returned to campus as the program’s first general manager was more like a rude belch. Unexpected and embarrassing.

Rivera, an All-America linebacker at Cal more than 40 years ago, was at Snapdragon Stadium last Saturday night for an up-close view of the unbeaten Bears’ 34-0 loss to 14-point underdog San Diego State.

With his background as a two-time NFL Coach of the Year who directed a team into the Super Bowl, Rivera was hired by Cal to oversee a hoped-for football renaissance in Berkeley. The Bears, who haven’t had a winning season since 2019, won their first three games.

Then came last Saturday at San Diego State.

“What I saw in all honesty . . . I saw an immature team, a young team, a team that’s learning and growing and trying to figure it out,” Rivera said of the game during his weekly appearance on KNBR’s Murph and Markus Show. 

“At certain points, frustration steps in. We have to mature. You can’t allow certain things to change the way you’re approaching a game . . . We’ve got to be able to handle certain situations. You drive the ball all the way down to the 2-yard line and then you don’t punch it in, you can’t let that affect the rest of the way you play.”

Cal got that close to scoring on its first possession, but when it couldn’t cash in the Aztecs gained confidence and the Bears slowly wilted.

The Bears (3-1) hit the road again to play at Boston College in their ACC opener on Saturday afternoon. 

Rivera talked about how coach Justin Wilcox delivered “explicit and very direct” messages to his players during the team’s Monday meeting. By the time practice got under way later in the morning, the page had been turned.

“We got onto the practice field and the first thing coach said was, `Guys, what happened on Saturday doesn’t exist anymore. That’s the past. We can’t change it. The only thing we can do is figure out what’s going on now and try to impact the future.’ So I loved his attitude, I loved the way he put it to the guys,” Rivera said.

“I think it was a great learning experience for those guys.”

Wilcox said everyone — players and coaches — needed to reflect and improve after the team’s first defeat. For freshman quarterback Jaron-Keawe Saapolutele the game was a rude welcome the realities of college football.

The Hawaiian left-hander had been better than anyone outside the program imagined in Cal’s three victories. But he completed just 10 of his final 30 pass attempts vs. San Diego State and was intercepted twice.

Rivera gave a calm, reasoned assessment of a 19-year-old experiencing his first real game-day adversity.

“The biggest thing is you’ve got to get him to understand you can’t do everything by yourself,” Rivera said. “There’s not a 13-point play or a 20-point play, if you will. You’ve got to take it one at a time. 

“I think he really got to the point where he started to press. He had a couple of easy throws he probably could have made and he decided to go for the big throw. And one time it cost him in particular. 

“He’ll learn, he’ll get better at it, understanding, `I’m going to take what’s out there. I’m going to take what’s given to me.’ “

Despite the mistakes, Rivera understood Sagapolutele’s intentions. 

“It’s hard to fault when a young player tries to do his best and tries to do more than he needs to.”

Rivera’s other message was to Cal fans, many of whom he knows probably wondered if the sky was inevitably falling. Fans in Berkeley hope for success but they are not conditioned to it, so when things go off-script . . . well, Rivera knows where that leads.

“That’s part of the problem. There’s a mentality,” he said. “You have to change your mind and stick to that. You can’t sit there and go, `Wow, this is great, wonderful!’ And if something bad happens, you go the other way. 

“You’ve got to continue to believe, and if you don’t believe, get out of it. OK, get out of it. And that’s the thing everybody has to understand. 

“Same thing for all of those players. You can’t sit there and drop your shoulders and start thinking, `Here we go again.’ “

Rivera recalled experiencing the same challenge as coach of the Carolina Panthers. The team was 2-14 the year before Rivera took over in 2011, so success was a fragile thing early on his regime.

“I got to the point where I realized we had to be bold. We had to take chances,” he said, referring to how his aggressive coaching style earned him the nickname Riverboat Ron. “We’ve got to be willing to put it out there and accept that responsibility. Once you do that, once you change your mindset, you give yourself a chance to win.

“But if every time something bad happens half the people jump off the bandwagon, before you know it you haven’t got anybody left to support you. If you want to change this program, you’ve got to support this program no matter what, through thick and thin.”

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